Jason Brown
Jason Brown is a producer at Berkshire Media Artists (BMA), an audio book and podcast production company producing audio for Audible, Recorded Books, Harper Audio among others. His background includes production at Sports Illustrated and People magazine as well as working with Douglas Trumbull here in the Berkshires.
Jayne Benjulian
Jayne Benjulian is a developmental editor working with authors and podcasters in memoir, the performing arts, and psychology. She is the author of Five Sextillion Atoms and poems and essays appearing in numerous literary and performance journals. Jayne served as chief speechwriter at Apple, and director of new play development at Magic Theatre in San Francisco. She was an Ossabaw Island Project Fellow; teaching fellow at Emory University; lecturer in the Graduate Program in Theater at San Francisco State University; and Fulbright Teaching Fellow in Lyon, France. More at https://jaynebenjulian.com/editor/
Jean J. Rousseau
Jean J. Rousseau spent 30 years in Wall Street, 5 with Smith Barney & Co and 25 with Merrill Lynch before moving to the Berkshires. Here, he owned and managed Berkshire House Publishers for 15 years before selling it to W.W. Norton Company in 2007. He has been active in civic affairs, serving as Chairman of the Town of Stockbridge Finance Committee, Chair for many years of the Berkshire Botanical Garden and Treasurer for a similar time of St. Paul's Church, Stockbridge. He also served for 20 years on the Board of the Austen Riggs Center, for some years as Chair of its Finance Committee, and previously on the Board of the Norman Rockwell Museum and the Berkshire County Historical Society.
Jean Moore
After receiving her PhD in English, Jean P. Moore began her professional career teaching American literature and composition. Before turning her attention to writing fulltime, she was an executive director in workforce development at Verizon in New York. Her work has appeared in newspapers, magazines, and literary journals. Her most recent novel “Crossing from Shore to Shore” was published by Running Wild Press in 2025. Her first novel “Water on the Moon” won the 2015 Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) for contemporary fiction. Her poetry chapbook “Time’s Tyranny” was nominated for the Massachusetts Book Award, 2018. “Tilda’s Promise,” a novel, was an NIEA finalist and won the NYC Big Book Award in contemporary fiction, 2019. Jean resides in Tyringham, Massachusetts, with husband Steve and Lexi, their Klein poodle.
Jean-Francois Bizalion
Jean-François Bizalion was born in Arles, a French city that prides itself on its Gallo-Roman and medieval past, its saucisson, its photography festival and soon a Frank Gehry building. For the last 11 years, he and his wife Helen have been restoring a modest 18th century farmhouse in Sheffield, the oldest on their road. She likes modern, he likes old. She is Irish, he is French. They left careers in the fashion industry in New York to start BIzalion’s, a food store and café in Great Barrington that specializes in olive oil, bread, cheese and charcuterie. Not surprisingly, they believe that a great sandwich’s best drink pairing is a glass of wine.
Jeanne Mahoney
Jeanne Mahoney is a writer and nonprofit professional with over 13 years of experience working in the sector. Much of her work has involved volunteers in some way. She's managed volunteer programs, including creating resources, and training materials for other volunteer coordinators. She's also coordinated events and worked as a grant writer. All of this nonprofit work involved quite a lot of writing -- Jeanne has written everything from volunteer profiles to grant proposals.
Jennifer Astrella-Wheeler
I'm well many things, I'm a daughter, a lover, a nature girl, Tom boy, doggy owner, a little OG, I swear like a trucker, probably cause I can work on trucks lol, I could go on here but also one part of me is I'm a recovering Heroin addict, by the Grace of my Higher Power! I have no college degree, yes I graduated high school by again the Grace of my fuckin Higher Power, I do have my Medical Assistant Certification. What I'm gettin to is what I've learned about life I've learned through living life it's been an amazing, crazy, scary, loving, joyful, sad, very sad, experience, full of many lessons some learned some still to come on this journey I've been on for only 37 years of life.
Jennifer Browdy
Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D., teaches comparative literature, gender studies and media studies at Bard College at Simon’s Rock. She is the Founding Director of the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers, the co-publisher of Green Fire Press, and blogs at Transition Times. Her new book, What I Forgot…And Why I Remembered: A Purposeful Memoir of Personal and Planetary Transformation, will be published in 2015.
Jennifer Owen
A fabric guru with an eye for color, interior designer Jennifer Owen has been recognized for her unique sense of style and vision. House to Home, the Lifestyle Magazine of Fairfield County, featured her on their cover for a home she redesigned in Westport, Conn. She has also been featured in East Coast Home Design magazine, at the Shippan (Conn.) Designer Show House, and at the Weston (Conn.) Show House. All of these venues salute her distinctive style of design, which transforms spaces into uplifting, functional environments -- “simple elegance” at its best! Jennifer is based in a showroom/office on Railroad Street in Great Barrington, Mass. She works with clients in Fairfield County, Westchester County, New York City, Long Island, and Berkshire County. She is a member of the Interior Design Society (IDS) and the Interior Design Protection Council (IDPC)
Jennifer Wheeler
Jennifer Wheeler is a 35-year-old writer, doggy momma, lover of nature, rider of horses, who loves to cook and bake, and loves music. She’s also a woman who, as she says, is “recoverin’ from strugglin’ with interruptions in my life!” She is also a Peer Support Worker at the Brien Center For Mental Health And Substance Abuse Services. She lives in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
Jenny Gitlitz
Jenny Gitlitz is an environmental consultant based in Dalton. She enjoys canoeing in the summer and cross-country skiing in the winter, and is an avid composter and mosaic artist. The mother of two daughters, Jenny serves on the town’s Green Committee, and teaches Hebrew School at Knesset Israel in Pittsfield.
Jeremy Yudkin
Jeremy Yudkin is Professor of Music and Director of the Center for Beethoven Research at Boston University. He is the founder and host of the Lenox Library Association’s Distinguished Lecture Series, and his pre-concert Tanglewood talks at the Library every weekend are now in their thirty-fifth year. His musical expertise is wide, including both jazz and popular music in addition to classical music. (His re-creation of all the music on the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band took place in 2017 in Lenox on the fiftieth anniversary of the album’s release.) He is the author of nine books and many scholarly articles and is known nationwide as a lecturer on music. Dr. Yudkin’s principal fields of research include medieval music, early Beethoven, popular music, and jazz. He has taught classes on medieval polyphony, the Beatles, Beethoven, Bartók, and Miles Davis, among many others. He has been nominated ten times for Boston University’s highest teaching award and was chosen as the University Lecturer for the university in 2010. Jeremy Yudkin is perhaps best known in the field for his definitive textbook "Music in Medieval Europe" and his highly successful music appreciation textbook Understanding Music, which is used by approximately twenty thousand students across North America every year. The video that he produced, "Inside the Orchestra," detailing the history and function of the classical symphony orchestra, was the winner of a 2005 Telly Award for outstanding non-broadcast educational video. He is also the author of several other books on medieval and Renaissance music and jazz. His book "Miles Davis, Miles Smiles, and the Invention of Post-Bop" (2009) won an Award for Excellence in Historical Sound Research from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections. Professor Yudkin is also Associated Faculty of the Department of African American Studies, Associated Faculty of the Elie Wiesel Center of Jewish Studies, and former chair of the Department of Musicology and Ethnomusicology at Boston University. From 2006 to 2011 he was Visiting Professor of Music at Oxford University, and he has served as Visiting Professor at Harvard University and Professeur Invité at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris, France. Dr. Yudkin received his BA and MA in Classics and Modern Languages from Cambridge University in England and his PhD in Historical Musicology from Stanford University. He is the recipient of a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation Fellowship, a Class of 1960 Visiting Scholar Appointment at Williams College, a Senior Fellowship at the Boston University Humanities Foundation, and a Research Fellowship from the Camargo Foundation. Professor Yudkin is a contributor to "The Harvard Dictionary of Music"; Musicians and Composers of the Twentieth Century"; and "A Companion to the Modern American Novel, 1900-1950." He is currently engaged in two book projects, one on Beethoven and the other on the Beatles. A book on jazz in the 1950s is also in process He served as an advisor to the Smithsonian Institution for the Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz and is a consultant on jazz to the Oxford English Dictionary. He is a Cultural Partner and Distinguished Speaker for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. He makes his home in the Berkshires, where he and his family have lived since 1994.
Jerry McCreary
Jerry McCreary resides in Auburn, Alabama. He had a career as a computer and communications engineer for a major defense contractor. In a fit of mid-life crises, he changed careers and became a financial advisor for a major investment firm. Between careers, he obtained a Ph.D in Management Information Systems. He is retired now and enjoys playing golf and acting in a local theater group. He has two children and is married to a wonderful woman, Sally nee Scribner, who has three children of her own.
Jess Bennett
Jess Bennett is the Concept Lead and Associate Creative Director - Copy at Method1, a New York ad agency specializing in behavioral science for indulgence brands. She was raised in New Fairfield, Connecticut, studied at New York University, and lived in Astoria, Queens, for far longer than anticipated. When not writing commercials, Jess likes to spend her time outdoors exploring the Berkshires with her husband and their dog and entering the occasional fiction writing competition. She is a full-time resident of Housatonic, Mass.
Jess Cooney
Jess Cooney is an award-winning designer with more than 15 years experience in the field of renovations, new construction and home furnishings. Her firm, Jess Cooney Interiors, specializes in working with second homeowners. Her team ensures that clients' houses have every amenity for being at home as well as making sure the second home is a true sanctuary for families in which to create lasting memories together and to decompress from the stresses of every day life. Her signature style is a mix of smart durable design, clean lines, modern sensibilities and rustic elements. Jess lives in Great Barrington with her husband, three children and two dogs. Other than home renovations, her passions are hiking, yoga, and coaching girls’ soccer.
Jesse JW Selman
Jesse JW Selman, AIA, is a partner at C&H Architects where he has been since 2006. With a dedication to place-based design, Jesse applies a life as a builder, farmer, and educator to the profession of architecture. He enlivens C&H with his passion to restore, re-build, and transform the built environment in the Northeast. A graduate of Vassar College & the University of Massachusetts Architecture program, Mr. Selman lives in Western Massachusetts where he builds resilience, soil, and community with insulation and insolation.
Jim Santos
Jim Santos joined Southern Berkshire Ambulance in 1975. He has nearly 50 years’ experience as an emergency medical technician. He joined the SBA Board of Directors in 2021, where he serves as president. He also serves as the president of the Southern Berkshire Emergency Medical Services Foundation, which provides grants to regional emergency services organizations. Jim just celebrated his 50th year working at Fairview Hospital.
Jim Sleeper
Jim Sleeper, a part-time resident of Alford, is a writer on American civic and political culture and racial politics. He is a former columnist for Newsday and the New York Daily News and taught political science at Yale from 1999-2020.
Joan Embree
Joan Embree has lived in The Berkshires since l974 where she’s been the chef of notable restaurants, including Wheatleigh in Lenox. Ma. and her own, Embree’s in Housatonic, Ma. a popular night spot with live bands.She went to American University in Washington, D.C., where she earned a B.A. in anthropology. Until her recent retirement she ran a catering company, all the while writing stories when she wasn’t being a mother, a grandmother, teaching yoga classes and cherishing countless homeless cats and dogs she adopted (or rather, who adopted her). You and Your Stories is her first book of short stories and Summer of the Stolen Dog her first novel.
Joan Schenkar
Joan Schenkar is a widely reviewed, award-winning playwright, author, and literary biographer. Her most recent book, the national award-winning biography THE TALENTED MISS HIGHSMITH, is a New York Times Notable Book published throughout the world. She lives and writes in Paris and Greenwich Village.
Jodi Cahillane
Jodi Cahillane gardens in central Berkshire County. She started gardening in urban Chicago and upon moving to Berkshire County, educated herself with the Western Massachusetts Master Gardener training certification and volunteer program in 1999. She has presented talks focused on Composting, Healthy Gardens, Invasive Plants, Organic Gardening: an Overview, Vegetable Gardening and Problem-Solving. Her goal as a gardener is to encourage her plants to thrive with as little interference from her as possible, with moderate success. For over 20 years, she has been a staff member at Ward's Nursery & Garden Center, Great Barrington, in customer service, information, and publicity.
Johanna Janssen
Travel has always been an important part of Johanna Janssen’s life, and it is travel that has given her a keen interest in all that concerns and influences our planet. Following her career as a Pan Am stewardess, she guided tour groups to China after President Nixon opened access to that country, and also to other global destinations. With her late husband Werner, an international lawyer, she visited many countries and sought to understand their history and ethnic customs. She now divides her time between the Berkshires and Florida, with considerable time every year still devoted to international travel.
John Breasted
John Breasted moved to Great Barrington after working in Hartford for 23 years as (sequentially) a medical student, medical school employee, newspaper reporter, lobbyist in the Connecticut legislature, researcher for a public interest group and a state agency, and as a grade school tutor. In Great Barrington he has tutored students since 1995, first at Monument Mountain Regional High School and then at Bard College at Simon’s Rock.
John Hockridge
John Hockridge is a member of the North Adams School Committee (14 years), Chair of MASC Division VI (Berkshire County), Chair of the Berkshire County Education Task Force. Owner of New England Weather Associates -- a meteorological consulting firm (43 years).
John Lawson
JK Lawson is a professional artist and poet. Over the past 25 years his work has been exhibited extensively throughout the USA including the American Visionary Museum in Baltimore, the Californian African American Museum in Los Angelos and this fall The Hebrew Union Collage in New York new York.. He is the author of five books including Now, his first full collection of poems. His novel, Hurricane Hotel set during Hurricane Katrina has been successfully adapted for the theater with several staged readings both in the USA and UK. Currently JK is involved in establishing a poets/songwriter residency at the Rame Center for the Arts in Cornwall, U.K. For more information please visit www.lawsonworks.com or follow him on facebook
John Townes
John Townes is a writer who grew up in Berkshire County. After working as an editor and writer in Seattle, Washington, he returned to the Berkshires and has written for regional publications for over 25 years.
John Whalan
John Whalan is president of Black Ice MassMedia and Black Ice Entertainment, LLC, a media development and production company based in Great Barrington, MA producing a range of commercial and artistic work from film, video and theatrical productions to mobile apps and software applications. He has produced documentaries, television and film including national television commercials for Coors Light and Burger King, an episode of the TV series “Quick Bites” called Food For Thought starring Minnie Driver and Tony Shalhoub with producing partner writer/director Joe Cacaci. Mr. Whalan is a member of the Board of Directors for Community Access To The Arts (CATA), where he served as President for five years and was the founding co-chair of The Berkshire Film and Media Collaborative. He also serves as an advisor to the boards of The Berkshire Playwright's Lab, and Multicultural BRIDGE, Inc.
Jon Swan
Jon Swan is a poet, translator, and journalist, who lived for forty years in the Berkshires and now lives in Maine. His website is jonswanpoems.com
Jonathan Baumbach
Jonathan Baumbach is the author of 17 books of fiction including Dreams of Molly, You or The Invention of Memory, Chez Charlotte and Emily, Reruns, Separate Hours and A Man to Conjure With. His short stories have been anthologized in Best American Stories, O.Henry Prize Stories, The Best of TriQuarterly, The Best of Boulevard, and All Our Secrets are the Same. His latest collection, The Pavilion of Former Wives will be out later this year. Film critic for Partisan Review, he will see a collection of his film criticism published this December under the title, Shots in the Dark.
Jonathan Butler
Jonathan Butler was appointed President & CEO of the Berkshire Chamber of Commerce in the summer of 2014. Since then, he has transitioned through the merging of multiple organizations to become the President and CEO of 1Berkshire. Jonathan began his professional career as Legislative Director for former State Senator Benjamin Downing and went on to become Town Administrator of Adams, Mass., at the age of 27. Jonathan has served on many boards and committees, including the Governor’s Economic Development Planning Council, the Berkshire County Education Taskforce, the Berkshire Leadership Impact Council, The East-West Rail Taskforce, and as a Trustee of Berkshire Arts & Technology Charter School. Berkshire Community College recognized him in 2016 in its first “Forty Under 40” salute, and Berkshire Magazine included him in 2018 in its “Berkshire 25.” Photo by Tricia McCormack
Jonathan Hankin
Jonathan Hankin moved from Los Angeles to Great Barrington in 1995. He serves as a member of the Great Barrington Planning Board and is a real estate broker at Berkshire Property Agents. He is on the Board of the Berkshire Playwrights Lab.
Judith Lerner
Judith Lerner has been writing about Berkshire food and lifestyles since 1987. Her features, columns, short fiction, photographs and drawings have appeared in local and regional publications including New Visions, The Berkshire Eagle, Berkshires Week, The North Adams Transcript, The Berkshire Review, The Advocate, Horizon AAA Southern New England, The Boston Globe, Edible Berkshires and iBerkshires. She has had a long career as a book and graphic designer. She created Judith's Kitchen, a restaurant serving organic and local food in Lenox in the 1980s, has taught cooking, writing and graphic design and has maintained The Gallery at Bagels Too showing area artists since the sheep were on the street in Pittsfield.
Judith Nardacci
Judy Nardacci is a retired teacher and civil and human rights activist, especially on behalf of women and girls and the LGBTQAI community. She and her husband live in Lee and have two children. She loves books, gardening (especially the digging-up-weeds-and-rocks part), chocolate, cooking, and being on the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers Planning Committee.
Judith Shaw
I’ve been an editor, a journalist, and a world traveller. For 25 years, my focus was horses.. Now I write stories, both fiction and non, and I’m working on a middle school novel about (what else?) young girls and horses. I’ve recently moved from a hay farm in Richmond to town life in Great Barrington.
Judy Eddy
Judy Eddy was born a Jerzey girl but headed west in her yellow VW bug soon after graduating from Drew University with a degree in French Lit and Philosophy. She honed her writing as a fundraiser for conservation and environmental organizations, and has continued to assemble sentences for a multitude of reasons, and for both real and imagined audiences. By a fluke of fate, Judy ended up back east, where she has happily remained. She lives in the lovely Berkshires with her son, Brian, and their big dog, Joey.
Judy Fox
Judy Fox is a native New Yorker who has lived in the Berkshires for the last twenty years. She has been a teacher of English as a Second language, traveled extensively and worked many years overseeing printing at a nonprofit educational organization. Judy is also an artist and has exhibited her work throughout the Berkshires; at libraries, the Colonial theatre and more recently at the Elusie gallery in Easthampton, Mass. About four years ago she got very involved in responding to the threat of climate change. She joined the Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL) and has been down to Washington DC about 5 times lobbying for a carbon fee and dividend bill on fossil fuels. She also started with a friend a local group in the Berkshires called Living the Change Berkshires that has helped put on three Earth Expo Events locally with another one happening next year involving schools, teachers and parents.
Judy Isacoff
Writer, naturalist, educator, and garden designer Judy Isacoff has published in regional monthlies, weeklies and dailies as well as professional journals in the field of environmental education. She is a columnist for the Battery Park City, New York Broadsheet Daily and The Broadsheet, and for five years contributed a weekly astronomy column to The Berkshire Eagle. A leader in nature study and curriculum-based gardening at schools in urban and rural settings, Isacoff is passionate about cultivating the sense of wonder through her teaching and writing. Her website: NaturesTurn.org
Julia Dixon
Julia Dixon is a freelance writer, creative economy consultant, and artist based in North Adams, Mass. In addition to The Berkshire Edge, she has written articles and columns for Berkshire Magazine, The Berkshire Eagle, CommonWealth Magazine, and Americans for the Arts. She produced the Bennington County Cultural Plan in 2019 and has contributed to creative economy research projects throughout New England.
Julie Michaels
Julie Michaels is a writer and editor who lives in West Stockbridge. She began her career as a reporter for the Berkshire Eagle,was a senior editor at New England Monthly Magazine, and a magazine and op-ed page editor at the Boston Globe. Together with Ariella Chezar, she is author of "The Flower Workshop" and "Seasonal Flower Arranging."
